My challenge for 2015: try something new every day for a whole year.

Day 41 – same, same but different

We’re constantly finding things that need changing around the house to make everything suitable to our life as a family.

Thus, today we took the little man to a certain Swedish furniture shop for the first time. It’s weird, everything was the same yet very different.

We borrowed a little handcart at the information to pull F. around in. When the lady asked for my driver’s license as a guarantee, I asked her what would happen if I didn’t have one. She shrugged her shoulders and didn’t even bat an eyelid when I joked: “Oh, so you’re not allowed to drive a handcart without a license then.” Well, I thought it was funny anyway.

I think having a baby with us certainly made the experience more focused. Usually, I fall into all the clever marketing traps, shopping here and looking there and suddenly believing I need things just because they’re pretty and colourful – and cheap, of course. Today, we didn’t buy anything that wasn’t on our list. OK, apart from a sleeping bag from F. that we really do need, however, so that doesn’t count.

We spent time in absolutely different departments than usual today: instead of DVD racks, potted plants and crockery, we now looked at high chairs, hanging cabinets (to stop those nosy hands from finding the good plates) and recycling solutions (to stop those nosy hands from finding the plastic or glass rubbish).

We didn’t want to stay there any longer than necessary and browsed a lot less than we normally would. That paid off: F. was really happy looking around at everything and never complained once. All in all, I had anticipated a considerably more stressful experience. But let’s talk again when he’s three or four, I guess.